The Moscow plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
70° on Nov. 16, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 69° in 1964.
Moscow’s center stands about 840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 1,100 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blue Mounds, about 1,740 ft, 13 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Prairie du Chien Group (dolostone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 42×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Moscow reaches the Gulf of America by way of the East Branch Pecatonica, the Pecatonica, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,760 river miles.
1,450 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Moscow; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moscow has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Moscow normally reaches 45° and falls to 26°. The record high is 69°, in 1971; the record low −3°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Dodgeville Wwtp, 16 miles west-northwest, 280 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
